According to New Scientist, physicist Antony Valentini at Imperial College London has published a striking new book titled Beyond the Quantum with Oxford University Press. The book presents a radical challenge to a century of quantum mechanics, arguing its core feature—randomness—is not a fundamental law. Valentini revives an old idea called pilot-wave theory, first proposed by Louis de Broglie in 1927 and developed by David Bohm, which suggests particles are always definite but guided by a wave. His big twist is that the famous Born rule, which dictates quantum probabilities, is merely a historical accident from the early universe. If particles weren’t in equilibrium back then, it could mean faster-than-light communication was possible, potentially leaving traces we could find today.
Quantum’s Big Problem
Here’s the thing about quantum mechanics: it works unbelievably well, but nobody really knows what it means. The central mystery is the wave function. Does it describe reality, with particles literally being in multiple places at once (the many-worlds view)? Or is it just a mathematical tool? Mainstream physics has mostly shrugged and said, “Shut up and calculate,” because the predictions match experiments. But that’s always been a bit of a cop-out. Valentini isn’t having it. He’s picking a side in the oldest fight in quantum town, and he’s bringing cosmology into the ring.
The Pilot-Wave Alternative
So what’s pilot-wave theory? Basically, it says the wave function is real, but it’s not the whole story. Think of it like this: the particle is a tiny boat, and the wave function is the sea it’s floating on. The boat has a definite position at all times—it’s not smeared out. But its motion is completely determined by the shape of the waves guiding it. This gets rid of “spooky” collapse and fundamental randomness in one go. It’s deterministic. The catch? To match standard quantum results, you have to assume the particles start out in a very special, “equilibrium” distribution. And Valentini asks a killer question: Why should we assume that?
A Cosmic Accident
This is where the idea gets really big. Valentini proposes that in the ultra-early, super-hot universe, particles were not in quantum equilibrium. They were all over the place. Over time, they “relaxed” into the equilibrium we see today, just like a hot coffee cools to room temperature. That means the Born rule—the very heart of quantum probability—isn’t a law. It’s a fluke, a temporary state of affairs we happen to live in. It’s a by-product of the Big Bang. Now, if that doesn’t make you sit up, I don’t know what will. It reframes a pillar of modern physics as a cosmic historical artifact.
The Wild Implications
And the implications are where it gets fun. Quantum randomness acts as a sort of noise that prevents us from exploiting quantum non-locality—the weird instantaneous connection between particles—for sending signals. But if the early universe wasn’t random in that way? Then faster-than-light communication might have been possible back then. Valentini even suggests looking for imprints of this “superluminal signalling” in the cosmic microwave background, the afterglow of the Big Bang. More speculatively, if any relics from that pre-quantum-equilibrium era still exist today, we might be able to achieve such communication now. It’s a long shot, but it’s the kind of concrete, testable prediction that big, confident physics is supposed to make. In an era where physics often feels stuck, that alone is refreshing.
